


Surfacing

by a_starfish



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt Sam Winchester, Insanity, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Season/Series 07, the wall - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 10:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_starfish/pseuds/a_starfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the ohsam comment!fic meme on LJ. The prompt was: Cas's <strike>completely, face-palmingly nonsensical</strike> "fix" for Hallucifer doesn't work. Not quite all the way, and not forever.</p><p>AU after 7x17, some general spoilers for the first half of S8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surfacing

When Cas said that he hadn’t seen Lucifer like Sam had... that had been a remnant. He didn’t understand it. Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to believe it.

Cas had taken his hell scars. After, his dreams were like looking through frosted glass, dissociated, lacking sound, just blurred visuals happening to someone else.

It started that way with Lucifer too, a few weeks after Cas reached out for him at Northern Indiana State Hospital. Or maybe it had been days after. Minutes. The flicker of a shadow in the dwindling twilight, the sensation of being watched, the fleeting shape he caught out of the corner of his eye.

Dean looked up from the newspaper on the table and raised an eyebrow, “Seen something?”

“No, just a shadow,” or a blowing curtain, a face in the crowd, a..., a... he didn’t know what.

Sam met his eyes briefly and glanced back at the corner of the cabin, there was definitely nothing there now. He wasn’t so sure about before.

Dean grunted and took another swig from his beer.

***

Walking back to the downtown hotel from the local 24/7 he stepped inside the hotel and made his way up the concrete stairs, every step echoing all the way to the 5th floor. Turning the corner everything was deathly quiet, he looked down the corridor and saw figures stood in every doorway, all staring at him, all the same. Lucifer. All wearing that same wry smile.

Sam dropped the bag and drew his gun, but in a blink they’d gone. There was no one there. He did a full 360 turn before he slowly put the gun away. Just an empty, low-rent hotel corridor with the sound of a loud TV playing at the far end of the hall.

Sam banged loudly before entering.

“Dude, you better be decent.” As he opened the door, Dean looked up, smirked at him and threw a paper ball at his head before looking back at the laptop. Sam breathed a small sigh of relief, normality resumed.

The next time he saw Lucifer was in the restroom at the library, he glanced in the mirror and saw Lucifer perched on top of the stall merrily swinging his legs. Lucifer smiled again. Sam turned on his heels and walked out. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Then Lucifer appeared sat between Sam and Dean in the impala. Sam couldn’t hide the flinch.

“Sam?”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Sure. Uh,” he looked back down at his phone trying to ignore Lucifer’s hand patting his thigh. “Left in 100 yards and then -” 

As he carried on talking to Dean Lucifer remained sat between them, feeling all too real. Sam dug his fingernails into his thigh and then the scar tissue on his hand but Lucifer wasn’t going anywhere. It was twenty minutes later, when Dean left to fill up the Impala with gas, that Lucifer raised his eyebrows and gave a little wave.

Gone.

A beautiful expanse of unoccupied black leather on the front seat of the Impala. Sam let out a long sigh of relief and let his burning muscles relax.

***

He dreamt of the Cage most nights, he dreamt of it from a height, a stranger looking in on all the things done to him, on all the things he did. He felt no pain. He heard no screams. The disembodied ethereal torture – of his soul – flickers of color behind a blurry screen and left a prickling sensation on his skin. It was only those particular nightmares he woke from choked and in panic.

He bolted upright nearly head butting Lucifer who was sat cross-legged on the bed next to him. Lucifer smiled and drummed his fingers on his left knee. His face seemed to be lit from below, unnaturally so, given the thin wedge of light striping from between the curtains and cross the floor. Sam dared to reach out, hoping to disprove this vision but recoiling in horror at the sensation of skin, solid cold dead skin, under his touch.

He scrambled back up the bed until his back was up against the wall and blindly reached out for the light switch. He felt the switch give and room flooded with light.  
Lucifer was gone.

Dean woke blearily to see Sam, chest heaving, staring unfocused into the mid distance like he did before and during his hospital stay. His stomach sank and he was up and reaching out, noting the way Sam flinched when he touched his arm.

“Sam. Sammy.”

Sam turned his head towards the noise and slowly looked up, eyes focusing on Dean. He blinked a few times and his expression of surprise morphed into an apology.

“Dude, sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“What’s up?”

“Just a bad dream.”

Dean raised his eyebrows and gave Sam a look that said: _I don’t believe you but I’ll let it slide this time._

***  
After that Dean kept an even closer eye on his little brother. He caught a few extra flinches, a few surprised looks, some staring off into the distance, some glancing around. Nothing damning, per se. Nothing reassuring either. He wanted to pretend he didn’t see all those things, that there wasn’t a chance his baby brother had something wrong with him that even Cas didn’t have the power to fix. 

***

A few nights later Sam was sat outside the cabin on the hood of the car, staring at the sky.  
With fear burning in his gut Dean approached slowly, making sure his footsteps were heard and settled next to Sam on the hood. 

“So, how bad is it?”

Sam kept staring heavenwards.

“Depends on the day. Lucifer doesn’t have a voice now. The sounds in my nightmares are... dampened, muffled.”

Sam lowered his gaze and glanced at Dean next to him, “this might be as good as it ever gets.”

“It’s getting worse again, isn’t it?”

Sam nodded.

“I’m not putting you in a rubber room, Sammy.”

“I know, but one day maybe you won’t have a choice.”

Dean ran his fingers through his hair. “Sam -” He watched Sam’s jaw clench.

“For now it’s manageable.”

Dean’s _’let me know when it’s not,’_ went unsaid. 

He gently nudged Sam’s shoulder and Sam gave him a small, sad smile in return.

***

It was less than a week after that when Bobby gave them details about Dick Roman’s grand people farming plan. Hours later they received Frank Devereaux’s automated email, not longer after they were on the road again.

***

Back at the cabin again, Sam eyed Lucifer who was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, before glancing back at Castiel.

“Okay. Um... right now I'm just wondering about you.”

“What about me? You're worried about the burden I lifted from you.”

“I think I was done for.” _Still might be_ , he thought. “Do you see Lucifer?”

“I did at first. But that was... It was a projection of yours, I think, sort of an after-taste.”

At that Lucifer wiggled his eyebrows at Sam and leapt up as if to say, _‘See! See! I’m **yours**!’_

Cas continued to speak, “Now I more see... well, everything. It's funny. I was – I was done for, too. The weight of all my mistakes, all those lives and souls lost, I... I couldn't take it, either. I was… I was lost until I took on your pain. It's strange to think that that helped, but – 

“I know you never did anything but try to help. I realize that, Cas, and I'm grateful. We're all grateful.”

***

That night, he stared at the wooden planks of the ceiling and listened the clock ticking, and felt faintly nauseous as he started to wonder if that flame burning inside wasn’t really hope but something more akin to denial.

***

Days later Sam was standing dazed in the middle of an empty lab surrounded by splattered black goo watching Lucifer run his fingers through it. Lucifer licked his fingers, seemed to ponder the taste before disappearing too.

***

Sometimes he thought, hoped, he saw Dean on the edge of his field of vision, but whenever he turned to look it was only Lucifer. Smiling. Mocking.

***

The hours when Lucifer left him alone he found his skin prickled and itched, like he was breaking apart inside and all the tiny shards of glass were crawling out through his skin. He brushed at his arms and legs to get rid of the swarming sensation. It never worked. Sometimes he scratched but nothing worked. Distantly he knew that it wouldn’t. Lucifer would smirk and shake his head at him as if to say, _‘Why did you think it would?’_

***

Some days everything tasted like ash, bone ash. Sam felt his stomach clench and convulse in response. Lucifer just sat there in the middle of the diner cleaning under his fingernails with a 10 inch dagger.

***

Sam didn’t check himself into hospital, technically. He was drunk and started a short lived fight with a well built asshole that he promptly decked. He was still drunk and a tiny bit hysterical as he went on to fight with Lucifer. On he went to the drunk tank and psych hold. But after the 72 hours, when Lucifer was still running his fingernails up and down his leg, he willingly stayed. Nothing left to lose.

***

He told them about Lucifer, they asked if he was having auditory hallucinations as well and murmured something when he said no, not any more. He told them about his brother disappearing, not the Leviathan black goo coated version, just that he’d disappeared suddenly. He told them about Bobby, about Dad, about Jess, about Mom.

***

They gave him pills, lots of pills. He took them and zoned out. Spent his time mentally wading through treacle. And all the time Lucifer was still there smiling, hopping about, throwing a ball against the wall, waving a knife at whoever was in the room at the time.

***

Two months later, so he was told, he couldn’t keep track, onto some different pills and Lucifer’s visits finally became less frequent.

They dwindled until one day Sam sat in the rec room and finally saw what a shithole it was. Paint flaking off the walls. A heavily worn linoleum floor.

And no one else was there with him.

***

With discharge papers in one pocket and meds in another, he stepped out, squinting into the bright sunlight. He caught a cab back to his last address; the Impala still mercifully where he’d left it behind the disused barn he’d been sleeping in.

He opened the car door and slipped in, inhaling the hot stale air that smelled like _home._ Turning the key in the ignition, he looked over at the empty seat next to him, glanced in the rear-view mirror at the empty ones behind him and brought his forehead to rest on the steering wheel. The gentle vibration of the car engine was so familiar it made him ache.

He was alone.

Lucifer was gone. Dean was gone. He was completely alone.

And for the first time since Dean had disappeared five months ago he sat there with his forehead against the sun warmed steering wheel and cried.

 

-fin-


End file.
